Tuesday, August 28, 2007

I guess my birthday is an appropriate day to assure everyone that I'm still very much alive. My FFXI schedule took a beating this month, mostly because I'm running out of steam as far as the game is concerned, but I do enjoy logging in to spend time with friends. Bioshock claimed a good portion of my time this past week, but I'll be logging on a bit more frequently in the coming weeks.

Monday, August 06, 2007

It's been a rough & busy week, and I haven't logged in much except at appointed times for certain activities. I've been focussed on getting the Roughnecks through the 40-cap CoP missions before our static moves on through the 40's and into the 50's.

Our first attempt at at 2-5 back on the 29th didn't go as planned, mostly due to critical miscommunications and the "Mammets! /panic!" factor. I won't go into detail, but we ended up farming a couple more Giant Scales and calling it a night.

Our subsequent attempt this past Friday night initially went as planned, until our first Mammet pull decided to remain in nuking form for some reason and didn't go down before I and several others died. It was a wipe. Lexxi reraised and we scrambled back into formation to at least try to complete the BC before the time ran out. I made a lame attempt at kiting in full Royal Squire's gear to allow Ahmber, our THF/NIN kiter, to reraise and head back to the entrance, but... I pretty much kited like a brick wall and went down quickly. That BC was a bust.

The second attempt of the night went...perfectly! Ahmber now had some practice kiting and had become a pro. Murrdoc (RDM/NIN) kept him healed nicely. Our killing party (Quan BLU/NIN [puller], Maloc PLD/WAR, myself WAR/NIN, Lexxi WHM/BLM) quickly turned during Transmogrifications, and the first Mammet thankfully switched to Polearm early in the fight, enabling me to spam Yellow Liquid to keep him in that form. That one died pretty quickly, and we expected to die in turn on the second Mammet, but didn't.

As the second one went down, we had basically won the BC, since we still had a healthy HP and MP pool and Doc and Ahmber now joined the fray. Even if we had died, we would have had sufficient time to reraise and dispose of the final Mammet. However, everyone remained alive until the very end, when yours truly died swinging... as usual.

A huge congratulations to the Roughnecks for toughing this one out. I know these missions can be discouraging, but they're a big part of the game experience and, in my opinion, much more fun that the EXP grind. There's nothing quite like doing this with close friends too. On to Diabolos!

In other news, Feon/Ishy kindly helped me with the last leg of the ZM journey to Sky: the magic pot fight.

While we were spelunking the Quicksand Caves, we assisted his friend in getting the Ancient Salt drop for her Opo Opo Crown, which didn't take as long as expected, so we headed to the Temple of Uggalepih to try for the Fish Bones, but weren't as lucky on that attempt.

We did, however, encounter Sozu Sarberry, unclaimed. We killed him rather quickly, but he didn't produce the money drop. Fun fight, nonetheless.

Before the Roughneck re-attempts at the Mammets, I finished up the CS busywork and made my way to Sky for some screenshots. Maybe I'll see some action there someday.

Here's a cool quote from the CS leading up to my first entry into Tu'Lia:

But as one bright star shines through the clouds at nightAnd as one song rings clear above the roar of beastsWe hold to one hope in these darkest of times.And someday, that hope will become our dreams... our prayers...